Collective_Action_Problems

The United States is currently about 1.5 trillion dollars in debt. The government has tried raising the debt ceiling higher to make up for all the spending, and only now are politicians trying to come up with a solution to reduce the debt. This debate is a perfect example of the three social dilemmas: collective action, agenda setting, and principal agent problems. Representative John Boehner and President Obama butt heads in this heated debate dealing with creating ways to lower the debt. Boehner says the only way to do this is to cut government spending on unnecessary things, and trim down entitlement programs to make them simpler. But Obama proposed the American Jobs Act, in which he wants to highly increase taxes on the wealthy to get the government more money to work with. This disagreement has been going on for a considerably long period of time, but neither side has come to a compromise, or even made much progress to an agreeable solution. Collective action problems stem from situations in which a political group makes a decision that benefits them and their supporters, but does not help the people as a whole. The debate over the federal budget displays Congress making a plan that helps their side more than the general population, and President Obama's budget plan is more beneficial to his side also. Congress's proposition will make programs like Social Security and Medicare not as convenient and accessible to Americans, and saves the government money, and Obama's plan will take money away from the wealthy citizens, which will probably anger them and lead them to not vote for him in the next election. Republicans in Congress do not agree with robbing rich people of their hard earned money because of the government's mistake (Republicans just do not want to see the President victorious as well), and Obama does not want to cut spending and go backwards in his plan for America's future. This debate is also reflective of agenda setting problems in that the people cannot give their input on it because there will not be a vote over it. The government is not getting the people involved in the debate; if they did, then politicians would know what the people want. Obama's initial tax cuts made people vote for him because he was saving them money, and now his new tax increasing bill is spending more money than before, but may decrease debt as a whole in ten years' time. According to an article in The New York Times, Obama stated that “the money is going to have to come from someplace.” The opposing Republican plan will also make things difficult right away. So because of these, citizens will not vote for either side, and that will keep politicians from getting re-elected. Principle-agent problems are also relevant in this debacle in that congressmen and the President are not rightly doing their job for their agents. Each decision will make some group angry and they will not get votes. Parties are trying to represent their supporters well, but they have not come up with a solution to the debt that will make everyone happy. Their decisions in the past were made only to please their agents to get re-elected, and now they are trying to clean up the mess. The three main social dilemmas that can occur in government are all present in the heated debate over how to fix the debt crisis. The people are not being represented well by their parties, and neither side has created a solution that will bring about more good than bad.